Today's business world is focusing more on collaboration and sharing of ideas. To facilitate the sharing of ideas and open collaboration between employees many employers are designing work facilities with an open and communal feeling. Temporary partitions are used in these facilities to define employee workspace. The partitions do not generally extend from the floor to the ceiling and thus sound can travel between employee workspace with relative ease.
One downside to this type of work facility is that many employees can hear what another employee is saying or doing when both employees are in their respective workspaces. Even more frustrating is when a conference call is organized with several participants in an open-plan facility. During these conference calls, some participants in the same office space will often take the call at their desk rather than meeting at a conference room or the like. This may occur because the participants need to have access to their computer at their desk or need to reference other documents at their desk. Regardless of the reason, whenever participants to a common conference call are seated relatively near each other but are participating using different communication devices, there is the chance that one or both participants will be able to hear each other through the air as well as over the conference call.
The participants will likely hear these two signals (i.e., an over-air signal and an electronic signal) at two distinct times. The over-air signal is typically received first since it travels on a local direct air path from the speaking participant to the receiving participant. The electronic representation of the same signal coming through the conference call is typically received second. The amount of delay between reception of the over-air signal and the electronic signal may depend upon the number of conference participants, the type of conferencing hardware being employed, the type of signal processing methods being employed, and other considerations. The delay between reception of the over-air signal and the electronic signal may range between a couple of microseconds to a few seconds. This delay can become very disconcerting and distracting for a participant during a conference call.
Also, employees on the same “project team” are generally seated near one another during a conference call. Sitting project team members near one another, while effective for helping increase their collaboration, further increases the chances of the team members encountering a situation where they will hear one another over the air and over the phone during a conference call.